


Not Exactly Detached

by kaydeefalls



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Drunkenness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-07-15
Updated: 2002-07-15
Packaged: 2017-10-14 04:51:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaydeefalls/pseuds/kaydeefalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein silk stockings, a variety of alcoholic beverages, and some miscommunication meet the "detached" part of Elijah's mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Exactly Detached

**Author's Note:**

> Response to Chelle's "silk stockings" challenge. Thank yous to Gabby Hope for the beta, and Tash for the "what's beta? oh, EDITING!" at the eleventh hour.

"You're kidding, right?"

Dom grins wickedly. "She'll love 'em."

"That's it, I'm never asking you for gift ideas again."

"If you're lucky, she might even let you put them on her. Or take them off."

"Dommie, no."

"Lijie, yes."

"I am not getting Liv silk stockings for her birthday!"

He raises an eyebrow. "If you've got a better idea, I'd like to hear it."

I exhale irritably. "You know I don't, that's why I asked you in the first place."

"Silk stockings, mate. She'll love you forever, I promise."

"Yeah, sure. Besides, I don't even know her size."

Dom gives me a measuring look. "Find a pair that fits you, then go for a size larger," he suggests. "I figure she's about that much taller than you."

I seriously consider stuffing the hypothetical stockings down his throat. I settle on a death glare. He ruins the effect by laughing.

"Fine, no silk stockings then. We'll think of something better." He looks me up and down, and I will myself not to blush. "You could just give her yourself," he comments with mock seriousness. "Just show up at her door tonight. I mean, what girl wouldn't want a few hours alone with a horny Lij?"

"Fuck you!" I yelp, swatting at him, and don't know whether I mean fuck you, asshole, or can I fuck you, please?

*

Flashback to two weeks ago. Billy, Orli, Dom, and I are in a bar -- excuse me, pub. No big surprise there. I've been sucking down beer faster than anyone else tonight, so I've already imbibed more alcohol than I really need. That's not too unusual, either. Someday I may figure out my alcohol tolerance level. Today is not that day. But this is all beside the point.

That point being, I'm a little tipsy, which means that I'm not completely in control of what comes out of my mouth. This is only a minor inconvenience, until Orli asks where Sean is and Billy says, "He's at home with his wife, lucky cunt."

"Yeah," I slur, "must be nice having someone you love out here, so's you can shag 'em every night."

Dom quirks an eyebrow. I get louder.

"I mean, s'nice he could bring a wife along. Real convenient and easy, like. Sean's in love and that's great, just dandy, everyone knows and approves 'cause she's his wife and all, but the rest of us aren't allowed to fall in love."

"I don't recall a no-falling-in-love clause in my contract," Dom remarks mildly. I have to tear my eyes off him, because if I keep looking at him I might do something really stupid. Which only proves the point I'm trying to get across to them.

"Right, so you fall in love, and then what?" Even in my drunken state I can tell that my voice is too loud. I lower it. Sorta. "So then you're working with them, and it's not so bad when you're split up for filming, but then comes a day when you're shooting together for the whole fucking day, maybe for a week straight, and you can't get them out of your mind!" Slow the fuck down! my brain tells me. I try to obey -- by which I mean that I actually pause for breath before continuing the rant. "And maybe filming becomes a living hell, 'cause you have to look at them for hours on end and you just want to fucking kiss them but you can't because you're being watched by Peter and ten million fucking crew members. And then you remember, oh wait, they don't even return the feelings, so you're wasting your time on nothing and nothing's gonna come of it and..."

All right, so I'm rambling. So I'm being uncharacteristically melodramatic and moony. At least I manage not to glance at Dom even once throughout the entire speech -- an effort which is ruined when he interrupts me. "Right. So, Lij, who is it?" And I stare at him. He's just looking at me steadily with those stormy grey eyes, and his lips curve into a smirk that I could really just kiss away, and he's challenging me. Daring me to tell the truth.

Oh fuck.

So I don't. Kiss him, I mean. Or tell the truth. Because Billy and Orli are staring at me, too. I panic instead, and say the first 'safe' name I can think of -- "Liv," I squeak, and my face goes red instantly.

Orli chuckles. Billy frowns. And Dom, Dom's expression doesn't change at all. He's smirking. The fucker is laughing at me. And I know immediately that I shouldn't have said that, shouldn't have said anything, should've just kept it quiet. 'Cause they'll never get off my back about this, and now I've got to pretend that I like Liv -- not that she's a bad person, but I don't actually want to get in her pants. (Or silk stockings, in retrospect.)

That night, Dom picks up a girl in the bar and goes home with her. She has brown hair and blue eyes, and she reminds me of a shorter version of Liv, and I hate him for it. Because he's obviously taunting me. Except he's getting it wrong.

*

Back to the present. We're all celebrating Liv's birthday in a trendy new bar that just opened in Wellington. Same old shit, if you ask me, but nobody does. Anyway, it's not actually her birthday -- that's not until July 1 (and no one in the Fellowship will ever forget Liv's birthday, she's been reminding us so damn many times). But we leave for our summer break on June 24, next week, so tonight will just have to do.

Summer break. Ha. That would imply warmth. Of course, here in good ol' Kiwiland the seasons are all switched around, which means it's fucking freezing outside. But that's a whole other story.

I toss Liv her gift -- literally -- and because God has lost interest in seeing me blush, she catches it easily. I finally decided on a CD I know she'll never listen to. What the hell, it's supposed to be the thought that counts.

Well, new bar, maybe I should go for a new drink. I'm getting sick of the usual beer, and there seem to be a lot of interesting drinks served here. Dom carries one over to me. It's, um, pink. Very pink. Disturbingly pink. I'm afraid to ask what's in it.

Dom is grinning in a way that suggests I'll be finding out EXACTLY what's in this frightening drink very, very soon. He shoves it at me. "You ever seen one of these before?"

Be suave, Elwood. "Sure, of course, give it over." I sniff warily at the fluorescent concoction, then take a gulp.

Wow.

It just isn't right that something that pink should be so incredibly alcoholic. The pink fiend is a truly nasty mixture of various liquors that were never meant to be mixed. And I still haven't the faintest idea how it gets its color.

Dom laughs at the expression on my face. "You've never tried this drink before, have you?"

I shake my head -- partly as a response, and partly to clear it. "I've never touched the stuff in my life," I admit. He's still laughing, and I can feel my cheeks beginning to burn. Fuck. I guess God hasn't lost interest in seeing me blush after all. To cover it up, I grab the drink and swallow the rest of it down.

On the plus side, there's no more offensive pinkness to be seen. And Dom looks vaguely respectful.

On the minus side, that drink is one nasty motherfucker, and it burns all the way down. Ugh.

As the evening wears on, I play a little drinking game with myself: whenever I do or say something embarrassing, I order a new drink and finish it off as quickly as possible. As I get progressively more sloshed, I blush more readily, and as a result drink even more. At some point, it occurs to me that this was a really dumb idea.

Oops. Too late. Well, at least I'm not a wild drunk tonight. The rapidly shrinking rational part of my brain is thankful that I am remaining seated and reasonably quiet throughout. Then it wonders whether it's still a qualified judge of what "reasonably quiet" means. Also, the "seated" bit gets a little blurry.

In contrast, the rest of my friends are partying hard. This entails many comings and goings, ups and downs, and other dizzying forms of movement. Movement, I decide, is very bad. I swallow down a normal-looking drink with an oddly orange aftertaste (the experience prompted by Orli's reaction to a rather ill-advised comment on his remarkably tasteless shirt). Orli rolls his eyes and stands, twisting around to look at someone or something, and the movement makes the pattern of this shirt shift in a very disorienting manner. I ponder optical illusions for a while before coming to the conclusion that his shirt doesn't quite qualify as one -- but by then, Orli is long gone and I can't share the revelation with him.

That rational part of my mind has deserted me completely, so I decide that Orli really needs to know my conclusion about his shirt, and I get up to look for him.

Whoa. Not bright. The room spins merrily around me, and I cling to the bar table for support. My gaze roams desperately around the bar, finally settling on Dom, who is heading my way. He doesn't have a drink in his hand, for once, and it would be nice to think about why he's coming over, except that one word suddenly blazes across my mind.

Toilet.

This is followed by another, more urgent, word: NOW.

I stumble away from my table, weaving my way through a haze of people and noise, and then I realize that I haven't the faintest idea where the bathroom in this place is, and I do not have time to find it. But that's okay, because I'm already halfway to the exit, and that works too.

I fall against the door, and miraculously it opens onto a deserted Wellington street. A detached part of my brain (which may or may not be the rational part, I can't really tell right now) notes that it's a lot later at night than I would have thought. And even though the freezing cold air is wreaking havoc on my jacket-less body, I am very grateful for two things: the lack of people, and the close proximity of a garbage can.

I'm busy puking into said garbage can when I hear the bar door open and someone step outside. No problem, detached-part-of-mind says. Worst case scenario, it's Liv, and she's upset about me ruining her party. I can handle that. After emptying the rest of my stomach, that is.

Except when I finally finish with the garbage can and look up, I realize that Liv is not the worst case scenario. Worst case scenario is Dom witnessing my humiliation, and here he is. Small blessing: my body is too busy trying to remain upright to waste energy on blushing.

He puts a plastic cup into my shaky hands. "Rinse your mouth out," he instructs me gruffly.

I peer into the cup blearily. There's a clear liquid inside. Vodka? He must be joking. I don't ever want to see any alcohol again. I look up at him, forcing some remnant of skepticism into my expression.

His mouth twists into a wry smile, but no amusement reaches his eyes. "Trust me," he says, his breath making a fine white mist in the air.

So I do what he says, and of course the liquid is just water. I'm such a moron. I feel a little bit better for the rinsing, although the sour aftertaste remains. Dom just watches me. "Hey, Lij, why'd you drink so much, anyway?" I can tell he's about to make a sarcastic remark, and I brace myself. "Liv turn down your offer for wild monkey sex?" He won't meet my eyes. "Fucking idiot," he adds, under his breath, and I can't tell whether he's referring to me or Liv.

Detached-part-of-mind (which, I finally decide, is NOT actively associated with the rational part) is getting a kick out of the phrase "wild monkey sex." It wonders whether Dom is implying that he would be interested in said wild monkey sex with me. Rational-part-of-mind resurfaces to inform it that no one wants wild monkey sex with anyone as piss drunk as I am, and Dom was definitely not propositioning you, you horny idiot.

What with the debate between Detached and Rational, and the rest of my brain occupied with not puking again and not falling over, I certainly don't have the energy or capability to respond to his comment. And to top it all off, I'm shivering like mad. Goddamn New Zealand winter in June. I give Dom back the cup, swaying slightly. He grabs my arm to steady me.

"I'm gonna drive you home," he says quietly, looking vaguely concerned now. "Just let me go inside and tell the others, I'll be right back." He releases me. My arm misses the warmth of his hand, but I remain standing. "Don't you dare pass out on me," he adds sternly. "You're small, but I still don't fancy the notion of lugging your unconscious body into my car." A quick grin, and he goes back inside.

Detached (and, apparently, Horny) is going nuts. It demands to know if that was actually a thinly-veiled proposition for wild monkey sex. Rational replies that no, it wasn't, so stop being such a dumbass, and aren't you supposed to be detached? Not exactly, Detached admits ruefully, but at about this moment my body tries to shut down completely, and the argument ends abruptly as all energy is focused on not collapsing. I certainly don't care for the thought of falling over onto the cold pavement. I'd probably freeze there. Elijah the Icicle. Great.

When Dom comes back out -- with my jacket, thank God -- the worry in his eyes is much clearer. "Christ, Lijah, you stupid wanker, I just compared notes with everyone inside," he says, draping my jacket across my shoulders. "They're all convinced that they saw you with only one or two very distinctive drinks, but they each saw you with totally different ones. How many did you fucking HAVE?"

I force a smile. "Too many, I think," I mumble through chattering teeth. The street is spinning, and I'm briefly aware that Dom is grabbing me again before I realize that my legs are no longer supporting me. I'm glad that the darkness comes swiftly -- otherwise, I might have died of embarrassment.

*

I'm having a fucking weird dream. A part of me knows I'm dreaming, and tries to disregard everything in the dreamworld, but the rest of me is going along with it. You know what dreams are like.

I'm back in the bar, except sober this time, and I'm chatting with Liv. She's holding that godawful pink drink. "So, Elijah," she says, half-shouting over the ambient noise of the bar, "how 'bout you and I go back to my place and celebrate my birthday properly?"

My eyes practically bug out of my head. Liv would never say anything like that. And isn't she engaged, or something? "Uh, sure," I say, deliberately misunderstanding her. "We could listen to that CD I bought you...."

She laughs. "I don't care about the stupid CD," she says, taking a sip of the drink. "I'm much more interested in getting out of these." She runs a long, white hand along her legs, and I notice that she's wearing silk stockings.

I stutter something unintelligible, and she laughs again. She leans in to me, and her breath tickles my ear. "I want to have wild monkey sex with you," she whispers. "I want you. And I know you want me."

I take a step back, startled. "I don't think--" I start, but she interrupts me.

"Here," she says, shoving the pink concoction into my hand. "Have some, you won't feel so nervous."

"No thanks," I say firmly, giving back the drink and backing away. "Um, I need to, uh, think for a sec, I'll be right back...."

I push my way through the crowded bar, to a door that I hadn't noticed before. I pull it open and step through, and somehow I'm in a dressing room. Not the sort of dressing room you would find in a trailer, or in a theater, but the kind you would try clothes on in at the Gap. There's a little bench, and a full length mirror. I look in the mirror and see myself, dressed normally from the waist up -- but wearing silk stockings. "What the fuck?!" I cry out.

My reflection smiles at me. "See, they fit fine," the image in the mirror says. "Now just go find a pair a size larger, and buy 'em for Liv. I figure she's about that much taller than you."

"We went through this already," I argue. "I don't want to get Liv silk stockings for her birthday. I'm getting her a CD."

"Oh, fine," my reflection says, pouting. "So take them off."

"What d'you mean?" I demand. "You're the one wearing the stupid things, not me." I look down at myself and, to my horror, I am indeed wearing a lovely pair of stockings. The mirror starts laughing at me. "Shut up!" I yell, but when I look back at the mirror, I don't see my own reflection. Instead, it's the girl that Dom picked up in the bar that one night, the one with brown hair and blue eyes, who I thought looked like a shorter version of Liv -- but could just as easily have been a female version of ME.

Whoever she is, she's still laughing at me, laughing hysterically. "Shut the fuck up!" I yell again, but she ignores me. I start pounding on the mirror, trying to force her to stop laughing. The mirror cracks, distorting the image of the girl, but she still won't stop.

I stumble out of the room, but her laughter follows me. Apparently I'm still wearing the fucking stockings, because everyone in the bar turns to point and laugh at me, too. Liv is still there, with that pink drink, and I can't face her, don't want to see anyone. I weave my way through the laughing, taunting crowd, feeling just as nauseous as I had when I was drunk. I feel sicker with every step I take, until I finally reach the door to the street. I push the door open, and fall through it.

And Dom is standing there, and he catches me. "Dominic?" I gasp in surprise, and that's when I wake up.

*

"Lij? Elijah?"

Maybe I'm still dreaming. That's definitely Dom's voice, and he was in the dream, but he certainly wouldn't be with me in the real world right now.

No, I'm awake. I open my eyes, and sure enough, Dom is there. So is light. Painful light. I grit my teeth and bear it.

"Dom? What--?"

"I thought I heard you call me." Oh, right, I shouted his name in my dream. Whoops.

"Where am I?" I ask. Brilliant, Lij. Showing off our mental capacity already, are we? Whatever, I just woke up and my head hurts like hell, I'm allowed to ask stupid questions.

Dom gives me his patented what-kind-of-an-idiot-ARE-you look. "In your bed, in your bedroom, in your house," he informs me. Why, so I am. How interesting. "Don't spend much time here?" he adds, the edges of his mouth quirking into the beginnings of a smile.

I sit up. Bad idea. VERY bad idea. My head explodes. "Ah, fuck..." I mumble.

"Hangover? I'm not surprised. Do you remember anything about last night?"

"Um..." Thinking hurts too much, but I make a noble effort. "Pink?"

Dom lets out a short laugh, confused. "What the fuck?"

"The first drink. Pink. You know." I wave my hand around to illustrate, but that makes my head shift a fraction of an inch, and I wince again. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck NOT happy.

If I didn't know better, I would think that Dom was deriving malicious pleasure out of seeing me like this. "Right, the first drink was an appalling shade of pink, but you followed that one up with a lot more, y'know." He shakes his head. Watching that makes my headache worse. "I did ask you not to pass out on me," he adds reproachfully.

"Yeah. Sorry." The worst of the pounding in my head is starting to recede, and I risk a look down at myself. Still fully dressed, of course. I vaguely remember vomiting into a trash can, but fortunately none of it seems to have gotten on my shirt. I look back up at Dom. Too fast. Ow. Fuck...

He smiles wryly. "Coffee? Aspirin? Cyanide?"

"Huh?"

"To put you out of your misery," he explains lamely. The joke falls flat. Especially because I have a sneaking suspicion that laughing might actually split my head in two.

"Coffee or aspirin works fine. Or both. Thanks."

He flashes me a small grin and turns to go, but something pops into my head.

"Dom?"

He turns back. "Yeah?"

"Why are you here?"

He gives me the look of one patiently explaining the obvious to a particularly slow individual. "You passed out. I wasn't gonna leave you in the street, was I? So I drove you home. And then I couldn't just dump you on the curb, so I hauled your skinny arse to the bed. All right?"

"Well, yeah, but that was last night. Why are you still here?"

Dom laughs shortly, and looks away. Embarrassed? Is he actually embarrassed? "I wasn't sure exactly how bad off you were," he explains, a little gruffly. "Didn't want you to throw up again in your sleep and choke, or something." He turns back to the door, then under his breath he adds, almost as an afterthought, "Besides, I love you, you fucking idiot."

He said it too loud, and he knows it. I just stare at him, openmouthed, my headache forgotten. His chance to shrug it off, or make a joke about it, passes. For the first time since I met him, Dom's the one blushing, and I'm the one looking on.

"Coffee," he mutters, and leaves the room VERY quickly.

Well.

My instinctive reaction is to start bouncing around giddily, but I squash that thought. Don't want to bring the headache back. So I sit very still, and ponder it. It might not be as straightforward as I'd like it to be, after all. He might have meant it as a friend. We hobbits are all in the habit of saying "I love you" in a friendly manner. Maybe that's all it was.

Right, then why the blushing and running out of the room?

Yeah, I know what I want it to mean. But I don't actually know what Dom was thinking when he said that. Only one way to know for sure.

Carefully, I get out of bed. After determining that walking won't kill me outright, I make my way -- slowly -- to the kitchen.

Dom is there, leaning against the counter, staring into space. There's a coffee cup next to him, but he ignores it. So much for room service.

"Dommie?" I say quietly.

"Sorry," he says, not looking at me. "I shouldn't have let that slip."

I pounce on this eagerly. "You meant it, then?" Um. That probably wasn't the most tactful thing to say, but it's too late now.

He just glares at me. Okay, maybe I deserved that one. But if this whole love business has proven anything, it's that I am the densest person alive, and I clearly need things spelled out for me.

"Christ," I breathe, "I never knew."

"That was kinda the point, Lij," he reminds me, with just a touch of bitterness. He stands, putting the counter between us. "Your coffee's there, and you're all right now, so I'll just be going..."

"No, wait!" I have to move a lot faster than is comfortable to grab his arm, but I swallow back the flash of pain in my head. The things I go through for this boy...

Dom glares at me. Again. Boy, am I raking in the popularity points here, or what? "What?" he demands. "I'm sorry, all right? Just pretend I never said anything and let me go."

"I lied," I blurt out.

His eyebrows draw together in confusion. "Lied? What are you talking about?"

"The night, at the bar, when I was drunk..." I start urgently. He laughs.

"S'almost every night," he reminds me. I wave his comment away, impatiently.

"You know what I'm talking about. The night I started rambling about other cast members and love and some other shit like that. I lied when I said I had a thing for Liv."

Dom's face goes blank as he processes this information. "Okay. No Liv. So this unnamed cast member who is not Ms. Tyler..."

"You, you stupid cunt," I tell him, exhaling nervously. "I was talking about you."

He doesn't respond. Not verbally, anyway. But his hand gently loosens my grip on his arm. I snatch onto the hand instead.

Hand, I notice. Warm. Nice. I look up at his face. Eyes. Grey. Warm, too. Also nice. Lips. I can't judge his lips based on sight alone, so I kiss him instead.

Yes, lips are very nice indeed.

The kiss ends eventually, as kisses generally do. Dom smiles at me -- wow, what a change from the dark looks he was shooting me all of two minutes ago. I should've tried this sooner. I grin right back, and I'm probably blushing but I couldn't care less. Except that once I'm not busy kissing Dom, I remember that I still do have a pretty bad headache. I wince slightly. He chuckles.

"Coffee," he reminds me. "And aspirin. But just to be on the safe side--" Dom grins wickedly, like he always does when he's about to say something suggestive, although it's never thrilled me quite like this before "--I recommend that you go right back to bed and get some rest." He leans forward a little, so that his mouth is right next to my ear. "Although," he murmurs, "the 'rest' bit is optional."

My old friend Detached is going apeshit. It is begging for confirmation that THAT was definitely an offer for wild monkey sex.

Yes, Rational responds bemusedly, as I practically drag a laughing Dom to my bedroom. It was.


End file.
